The war now raging in Ukraine has proven extraordinarily deadly for Russian generals, who have been hit hard by Ukrainian forces, killing them at a rate not seen since World War II.
Ukrainian officials say that their forces killed 7 Russian generals on the battlefields, who were killed by snipers or as a result of direct explosions and clashes.
The newspaper considers that this, if proven true, in addition to the killing of many senior leaders of the Russian army and navy during only 4 weeks of fighting, exceeds the rate of attrition that was seen in the worst months of fighting during the bloody 9-year Chechnya war and in the Russian and Soviet campaigns in Afghanistan and Georgia and Syria.
"It is very unusual," a senior Western official told reporters, confirming the names of the seven killed generals, their ranks and the status of their "killed during military operations."
Markyan Lubkevsky, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, confirmed that at least 15 senior Russian commanders were killed in the field.
NATO officials estimated earlier this week that as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the four weeks of the war, a "very high" number at a time when Russia provided a much lower figure, saying on Friday that only 1,351 of its soldiers They were killed and did not confirm the killing of any of its generals.
The American newspaper pointed out that if the numbers of senior commanders killed prove accurate, the Russian generals are either very unlucky, or they have been successfully targeted, or both.
The shooting of the generals - the newspaper adds - is a legitimate tactic of war, and Ukrainian officials have publicly adopted it, stressing that their forces have focused on slowing the Russian advance on the ground by focusing fire on Russian command and control units near the front lines.
Some experts note that the Russian military has struggled to keep its communications secure, and that Ukrainian intelligence units have set their targets due to the neglect of Russian forces and their use of unencrypted devices, as there have been reports of Russian soldiers using mobile phones.
The Pentagon and other Western officials say that Russian generals generally serve near the front lines compared to their NATO counterparts, and given the nature and structure of the Russian forces, the military is full of senior officers, making them more replaceable and abandoned.
Containing chaos
Military analysts and Western intelligence officials also confirm - the Washington Post adds - that the Russian generals in Ukraine may be more exposed, and serve near the front due to the fierceness of the battles and in order to contain any chaos in the ranks of the army.
One Western official argued that Russian generals on the front lines were needed to advance "terrified" Russian forces, including the new recruits whom President Vladimir Putin ordered earlier this month to be pulled from the battlefields after he had previously publicly pledged not to deploy them.
Pentagon, NATO and Western officials say that the Russian army in Ukraine is fighting with weak morale, and a Western official and a Ukrainian journalist said a few days ago that Russian soldiers attacked and wounded their commander after their brigade suffered heavy losses in the fighting outside the capital, Kyiv.